Training Ivy [How The West Was Done 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Karen Mercury

  “Mister? How can I ever thank you? I never would have seen my earring between those wooden boards. I’m a bit hard of seeing, too.” And would have corrected the problem with new spectacles had she not run from her fiancé in New York, who had promised to provide that and everything else a girl could ever want.

  “Mr. Neil Tempest,” said the stranger. “I’m the head of security for the fort and now the railroad.”

  His long arms dangled attractively, his sunbrowned and veined hands hanging about muscular thighs. He wore his gun belt in that cocky manner she’d noticed men in the Far West did—hips thrust forward assertively, leather holsters worn in the shape of the six-shooters they cradled, obviously drawn many a time.

  Mr. Tempest’s chestnut hair was shorn carelessly and spiky, as though to recently rid him of head lice and grown back in a devil-may-care way—probably having no wife to show him a mirror. Sharp blue eyes observed her acutely above a hawk’s nose—an expression Ivy might’ve taken as disapproval, but he looked as though he wore a permanent squint. Most people seemed to, here in the windswept heat of the limitless prairie.

  “I’m Ivy Hudson. I’ve just come across this Great American Desert, and my head’s still bouncing around from the tortuous lack of springs in that Concord coach.”

  “Well, great balls of…” Mr. Tempest said thoughtfully, and Ivy tried to pinpoint his accent. He was decidedly British but with an unusual lilt she couldn’t determine. He seemed to jolt from his daze then and leaped to grab a couple of her portmanteaus. He held the door open with his boot. “Is Mr. Hudson expecting you? I didn’t hear him say anything about a daughter arriving.”

  “Nor would you,” Ivy said vaguely, following Mr. Tempest into a grand foyer. While stone blocks made up part of the outside structure of the house, the interior was awash in polished wooden floorboards, wainscoting, and a curved staircase that led to the second story. Why had her father built such a lavish mansion with his entire family stuck back in New York? Perhaps it was to enhance his image in Laramie as a Far West captain of industry. “Because I didn’t tell him.”

  Now that he was out of the harsh sun, Mr. Tempest stood before her and smiled effortlessly. Ivy saw he was quite charming really, almost in a boyish way. An unusual quality in a man so devilishly handsome—one who had probably been sought after by the most gorgeous belles. Briefly she wondered what he was lacking that he wasn’t jaded yet. That he could allow her to see his charming naivety.

  “Well, when we left him a couple minutes ago, he was sleeping.” A nod of his head indicated a downstairs room, not a bedchamber.

  Ivy laughed. “Oh, does he still do that? Sleep sitting up?”

  Mr. Tempest joined in her laughter. “Yes, quite often.”

  “In the middle of meetings?”

  “In the middle of meetings.”

  They paused to smile idiotically at each other. Ivy enjoyed merely gazing upon his classically handsome face. He regarded her as though she were a roasted hen he drooled to gobble up until he completely ruined the moment by saying, “So you have three other sisters, Mr. Hudson tells me?”

  Oh! Those damned other sisters! Ivy loathed thinking about them! She loved her sisters, of course, but to be constantly compared to them was beyond maddening! Naturally, they’d been in competition with each other their entire lives. Who was the most beautiful, the smartest, the most accomplished? One of the things she’d hoped to gain by traveling hundreds of miles into the Far West was to be rid of these constant comparisons!

  She turned icy. “Yes,” she said through thin lips. She squared her shoulders and faced the closed study door. “But they are back in New York, and I am here. Now, Mr. Tempest. Can you show me into my father’s study?”

  He ducked his head a little with apparent shame, and Ivy felt badly. Of course, he didn’t know that his mention of her sisters would bring out her competitive spirit. “Yes, Miss,” he said obediently. How had he learned this obedient manner? Ivy wondered. Perhaps he’d been married before.

  “Call me Ivy.”

  Now she had to face her father.

  Yes, he was slumped back in his chair, mouth slightly open, looking far older than she’d expected. Perhaps the constant prairie winds did that to one, battered one’s face. When Mr. Tempest touched his shoulder, Simon Hudson gulped and snorted and looked to all corners of the room.

  “Father!” she uttered, to waken him.

  “What?” he sputtered. “Who’s that? Who’s there?”

  Ivy had been dreading this moment for weeks. Racing forward, she enveloped her father in her dusty arms until he seemed to really believe it was her. He stood and held her at arm’s length, looking from her to Mr. Tempest then over to that amusing Zeke fellow, who giggled like a silly baboon.

  “Ivy, my dear! Whatever are you doing here?” Mr. Hudson asked, logically. “Where is”—he looked to the wall as if for assistance in remembering—“Mr. John Prahl?” Then he looked around eagerly, as though John Prahl were hiding behind a spittoon.

  Ivy shook her father. “John’s not here, Father. We, ah…we never married.”

  Instead of becoming angry, her father merely looked confused. Ivy had to sigh. It would be nicer, actually, if one had a father who would become angry. On her behalf, preferably. Angry at John Prahl for having the nerve to not marry his daughter. Angry at John Prahl for being such a dunderheaded bore his daughter could not conceive of marrying him. “Why not?”

  “I decided not to, Father. I couldn’t imagine…” She sighed heavily, and then it all came out in a rush. “I couldn’t imagine spending the rest of my life tied to a man whose only topic of marital conversation involved valves and ledgers!”

  Was it her imagination, or did Mr. Tempest look as though he suppressed a laugh? He turned to a bookcase, and yes, he definitely had a smile at the corners of his luscious, well-made mouth. Instead of being irritated with Mr. Tempest, Ivy felt a sort of kinship with him. Perhaps he could understand! Perhaps that wife who had browbeaten him had led him to feel the same way—that life was better without them!

  “Valves and ledgers?” Mr. Hudson asked vacantly. “Why, what’s wrong with valves and ledgers?” His look turned angry then. Angry with his daughter. “How do you think Mr. Prahl gained his fortune, aside from valves and ledgers? Daughter! You are what, thirty years of age now? I made an excellent selection for you, and you dare to toss it away? What sort of better life are you hoping to achieve for yourself?” He looked around the room in horror. “Especially here, in Laramie City?”

  Ivy had this all planned out. “I know what I can do, Father! The Pacific Railroad will require hundreds of tunnelers, masons, surveyors, teamsters—”

  “And you will drive a team of oxen? Absurd!”

  “—teamsters and telegraphers! Father, on the train from Omaha to Cheyenne I amused myself by sitting by the telegrapher. A fascinating fellow! He showed me everything—well, not ‘everything,’ surely there’s more to it than that—but he showed me every important detail necessary to run the telegraph. And back in Hyde Park when I would send and receive telegrams from you, I spent hours in the telegraph office chatting with the operator, a very nice fellow—”

  “Absurd!” roared Mr. Hudson, lurching to a sideboard to pour himself some booze. “No daughter of mine will ever be seen operating a telegraph! Do you know what sort of low types lounge about telegraph offices? Your mother would turn over in her grave to witness that! Laramie City is a lawless frontier town peopled with a bunch of hangers-on. A prairie dog town!” He twirled to face Mr. Tempest, pointing at him with his glass. “You tell her, Neil! You’re head of security—you tell her about the daily shootings.”

  “Yes, indeed,” Neil said seriously. “We have a new rag in town, and there’s a column entitled ‘Last Night’s Shootings,’ that’s how many there are. It’s very rough-and-tumble, miss, right in the middle of what they call Hell on Wheels.”

  “I’ve heard of Hell on Wheels,” Ivy said hotly, following her f
ather to the sideboard. “I’ve been chasing those ramshackle tent towns the past several weeks—the Overland Stage Route follows the trail of those rowdy hangers-on. I tell you, it’s far more exciting than playing whist in Hyde Park with a bunch of old Mrs. Grundys. I can take care of myself, Father!”

  Her father didn’t fail to notice that she poured herself a tumbler of booze, too. He whisked the glass from her hand and shouted, “Besides, we already have a telegraph operator! Neil, who is that fellow? Bradley something?”

  “Bradley Mack. And he was shot dead three nights ago.”

  Ivy shot Neil a triumphant glare. When she saw he actually was laughing this time, she felt a camaraderie with him that gave her the courage to say, “See, Father? There’s a position open that I can fill.”

  Mr. Hudson waved his arms so stridently the whiskey sloshed from his glass and onto the gleaming floorboards. Stepping in the puddle, he cried, “I don’t want to hear another word about it! In fact, I am going to the telegraph office now to wire your sisters and arrange for your return journey. I can’t be burdened with a daughter, not in this lawless mire that passes for a town!”

  “If I may add, sir,” said Neil, apparently emboldened, “the telegraph office is in the same building in the Union Pacific complex where I have an office. The head of security,” he added needlessly.

  Ivy graced Neil with a grateful smile. How she wanted to squeeze his hand! A warm glow eased up her spine and stiffened her nipples, and she knew her cheeks were flushed. Why was he taking her side? Perhaps he merely wanted more women in town so as to have someone to dance with at the fandangos. That must be it.

  “Yes,” said Mr. Hudson, “but where was Bradley Mack shot? In his office? And where were you when that happened, might I add? No, this simply will not work. I’ll wire your sister Liberty—she always has a sound head on her shoulders! Zeke, come with me. I’ll need you to tap out the message, or whatever it is they do. And don’t tell me Allie has turned down that other fellow I betrothed her to! Have none of you girls wed yet? I need a male heir, dammit!”

  Zeke now stepped forward and said eagerly, “But her arrival is the sign we were discussing, Simon!” He gestured dramatically at Ivy. “Witness, her earrings! Her emerald earrings. She nearly lost one just now, on the front porch, but Neil here managed to find it.”

  Ivy was grateful to Zeke for bringing this up. Her father had always been interested in things of a psychic nature—he had followed mesmerism and spiritualism along with his friends Alcott and Emerson until he realized it was probably getting in the way of amassing a large fortune.

  Now, Simon even put down his empty tumbler and waxed thoughtful. “Yes, yes, Caleb’s vision of the earrings. Those earrings, my dear, those were your mother’s, were they not?”

  “Yes!” Ivy declared eagerly.

  As she came forward, holding up her hair with one hand to display the earrings to her father, Neil suddenly cried, “Ow!”

  At the exact same instant, a sharp, loud bang like a rifle shot exploded directly behind the head of security, and everyone turned to see him brandishing a six-shooter at the wall behind him.

  “What was that?” Neil demanded.

  Zeke was the first to step forward and root out the offending object on the floor behind Neil. He stood straight, gingerly holding out a shiny round object about two inches long.

  “Why,” cried Mr. Hudson, “that’s my paperweight! From my desk—ten feet over there!”

  Chapter Three

  Zeke’s jaw near about touched the floor. “I saw a streak in the air as it zipped by! Neil! It was trying to hit you! What was the last thing you said before it hit you? Let’s see, let’s see…Something about how fine it was for Miss Hudson to stay in town! That’s it! It’s a sign! A sign that she should leave town!”

  Neil holstered his gun and smacked his own forehead. What jackasses these Americans could be. He felt he’d been making progress impressing the beauteous Miss Hudson, and now all the affection he’d built was being ruined by sheer idiocy. “Oh, great balls of fire, Zeke! What are you, an Admiral Lushington? A pickled rummy? It’s a goddamned paperweight.”

  “Yes,” Zeke agreed in a hushed voice. “A paperweight that doesn’t like you.”

  Miss Hudson had taken the globe from her father and was examining it. “No,” she said, clear and loud. “It’s his paperweight emblazoned with our Hudson family coat of arms, depicting a castle. Zeke, what were you saying earlier about our coat of arms? Why were you asking?”

  “Caleb’s vision!” the buffoon cried. “The bison was standing over a shield depicting a coat of arms with a castle!”

  That was the final straw. Storming toward the door, Neil fumed, “Caleb, Caleb. Don’t you understand? That invert is nothing but a half-witted blacksmith who lives with a ragtag band of Sioux, powwowing with Indian spooks, ghosts, and hobgoblins. I’m going back to the office to check on the state of real criminal activity.”

  As he reached the doorway, though, Ivy called out, “Wait, Neil!”

  Of course he waited. Ivy Hudson was the most bountiful, intelligent, and delightful creature Neil had run into since leaving New South Wales a year ago, when he’d realized that country had nothing left to offer him. “Yes?”

  Fear and desire swept across Ivy’s pleasing face. “You’re going into town? Let me come with you. There are a few items I wish to find.”

  And, like the headstrong woman Neil was beginning to realize she was, Ivy followed him down the hallway without requesting her father’s permission.

  Mr. Hudson did yell out, “Daughter! Will you send your sister that telegram?”

  “Yes, Father. I will tap it out myself, since I know how!”

  However, Ivy paused in the foyer to take some coins from a carpet bag, giving Zeke enough time to bellow down the hallway, “Caleb told me ‘the steel magnetism is coming.’ There’s some psychic fire that’s charging the atmosphere.”

  Neil wasn’t normally a drinking man, but at the moment he felt like dropping into the Bucket of Blood saloon, that was for sure. He yelled back, “Of course there’s some goddamned steel magnetism coming, you out-and-out dummy. It’s called the railroad!”

  Zeke shouted, “Caleb also said before the end of today a large amount of water would fall from the sky and an everlasting imprint would be made! Oh,” the clown added as an afterthought, “and an Indian will find the peaches he’s been looking for!”

  Not with the damned Indians again.

  Neil was immensely relieved when he was finally alone in the windswept street with Miss Ivy Hudson. Laramie City had been thrown up near Fort Sanders in advance of the railroad track, two thousand men encamped on the alkali plains in tents and board shacks. Neil was afraid Ivy would dislike the treeless, uncivilized wilderness, especially after having lived in New York her entire life, so he hoped to take her to Freund and Brothers. In addition to providing rifles and shotguns made to order, Freund carried India rubber blankets, quinine, cigars, and Bibles. Well, perhaps she wouldn’t desire the cigars so much. But Neil had found a passable sextant there one day.

  “That Zeke is an odd character,” Ivy said. The dyed green ostrich feather in her jaunty cap jiggled alluringly as they walked down Garfield Street. Neil was thankful the street was no longer a muddy mire as it had been two weeks earlier. “But you honestly don’t believe his friend Caleb? They might be onto something. You’ve got to admit, all of those things happening were a mighty odd coincidence.”

  So she really had faith in Zeke and his stories about the “visionary” Caleb? Neil had to step lightly or risk alienating this stunning beauty. He knew her father was a believer in Transcendentalism, a sort of utopian movement where they lived with nature and hypnotized each other or some such nonsense. Simon Hudson had been known to spew mystical Far Eastern claptrap, something about bathing his intellect in the fruits of—well, apples, as far as Neil could recall. He wished he could recall more, since now it suddenly seemed important.

 
“Well, I don’t find it so shocking, really,” he said confidently. “Objects have been flying through the air all around me lately. It’s quite consternating. Just yesterday I was sitting in my office near the depot when a rather heavy Spanish peso coin zipped past and hit the wall behind me. For a moment I thought I’d been shot.”

  This appeared to excite Ivy, for she clasped his forearm and held it close under her bosom. Oh, if only those galoots at the fort could see him now! Walking down the avenue with a fair belle dressed to the nines in green velvet, the daughter of the chief businessman of the city, to boot. Neil proudly tipped the bill of his army cap to Mr. and Mrs. Fowler as they boarded their buggy. But he’d left his gold-buttoned frock coat back at his office, and his waistcoat didn’t begin to cover the burgeoning erection that rose against his thigh.

  “But it’s so obvious that you’re the channel for this magnetism the seer said was coming. Just now, the paperweight didn’t hit anyone else—it made straight for you!”

  While Neil was perfectly willing to be the channel for anything this lady wished, he thought he’d play devil’s advocate. “But what do you make of his vision that a large amount of water would fall? Why, it’s the end of the rainy season. All that’ll fall from now on is—” He was going to say “a large amount of pickled rummies,” but he refrained. Instead, he said, “You should be the channel for the magnetism, since you learned how to work the telegraph.”

  She hugged his arm even tighter under the buoyant shelf of her bosom. “But you never know in what form this water will exhibit itself. I mean, look at the bison thing. It obviously referred to me, although now that I think on it, I don’t like to be compared to a large shaggy animal. Now, tell me, Neil. What part of England are you from?”

  “Ah, not England precisely. Australia. New South Wales. Sydney.”